A highly experienced American fighter pilot has been arrested and accused of training the Chinese army to fight American aircraft, the US Department of Justice announced, which accuses him of "treason", reported Agence France-Presse, quoted by BTA.
The 65-year-old US Air Force officer was arrested in the state of Indiana after more than two years spent in China, the prosecution claims. Training a foreign army without permission is prohibited by US law.
Gerald Brown was a pilot of F-16s and other aircraft for 24 years in the US armed forces. He was a unit commander, led combat missions and worked as an instructor.
After retiring from active duty in 1996, he worked in the private sector and was an instructor on a simulator for the F-35, the most advanced fighter jet in the US military.
The US justice system accuses him of contacting a Chinese citizen in 2023, to whom he shared his desire to train pilots from the Chinese army for combat operations. From the first day of his arrival in China in December of that year, he answered Chinese authorities' questions about the US Air Force for three hours, after which he remained in the country for more than two years.
"Gerald Brown, a former F-35 "Lightning" instructor pilot II with decades of experience flying American military aircraft, the indictment alleges, "betrayed his country by training Chinese pilots to fight against those he was sworn to protect," Roman Rojavsky of the FBI's counterintelligence division said in a statement.
"The FBI and our partners have arrested a former U.S. Air Force pilot who trained pilots for the Chinese military," CIA Director Kash Patel wrote in "Ex", calling the case "significant".
The Justice Department recalled that another American pilot was accused of similar acts in 2017 and arrested in 2022 in Australia. He also worked for China, Washington's main geopolitical adversary.